The Artful Dodger wrote:LOTR for me. I enjoyed the books and films equally, but prefer the books.

Potter for me for specifically this reason. The LOTR books are tremendously overrated. They were ground breaking and pretty much started an entire genre but on their own they are good but not great. I couldn't read them a second time even though I tried.

Also the movies were all oscar nominated but I found the last one very disappointing. I love the movies and can watch the Battle of Helm's Deep all day (I think that I may have) but these were not oscar-worthy pics.

Potter on the other hand are incredibly written stories. They are stand-alone and as a series, better written than LOTr and withstand numerous readings. They movies are meh but I picked Potter for the books.

Mookie4ever wrote:Also the movies were all oscar nominated but I found the last one very disappointing. I love the movies and can watch the Battle of Helm's Deep all day (I think that I may have) but these were not oscar-worthy pics.

I thought the 2nd one was Oscar worthy. also, viewing the trilogy in the context of one long movie it is definetely oscar worthy. hence the 3rd (and worst) of them winning the oscar. I think that won as more of a lifetime achievement award based on the merits of the whole series.

whether things like that should be considered in oscar voting is probably a different discussion entirely.

Potter for me. After years of saying I would never read them I read all the Harry Potter books and really liked them. The movies are really well done too. I tried to read LOTR but couldn't get through it. The first two LOTR movies are great, not so much the third.

Lofunzo wrote:Since you didn't add a 3rd choice of being kicked in the nuts, I went with LOTR.

I like this guy

Surprise, surprise. I've never read any of these books (always feel like reading fiction is a waste of time) but am interested in knowing what you think about reading them before seeing the movies...or is it better in opposite order?